If No One Ever Marries Meby Laurence Alma-Tademapublished in 'Realms of Unknown Kings', 1897

If no-one ever marries me-- And I don't see why they should,For nurse says I am not pretty And I'm seldom very good--

If no one ever marries me I shan't mind very much;I shall buy a squirrel in a cage, And a little rabbit-hutch;

I shall have a cottage near a wood, And a pony all my own,And a little lamb, quite clean and tame, That I can take to town;

And when I'm getting really old, At twenty-eight or nine--I shall buy a little orphan girl And bring her up as mine.

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An excerpt from To The Dead in the Graveyard Underneath My Windowby Adelaide Crapsey

Written in A Moment of Exasperation

How can you lie so still? All day I watch And never a blade of all the green sod moves To show where restlessly you toss and turn, And fling a desperate arm or draw up knees Stiffened and aching from their long disuse; I watch all night and not one ghost comes forth To take its freedom of the midnight hour. Oh, have you no rebellion in your bones?

I want to read A Study in English Metrics now. I have no natural sense of meter, so I have much to study. There is a wicked sense of humor in these poems that really thrives in the snap of the language she builds.

Huh. The inventor of the cinquain. I guess if I had thought about it harder, I would have realized that it needed to be invented, but it had always just seemed to exist. Thanks for the little shake-up and for two new poets to love.